Contemporary India is not a place - it is a vortex. A terrain where memories, traumas, and desires twist like underground currents. From this vertigo, the PAC builds a sweeping group exhibition that explores how Indian art responds to historical, social, and political fractures, transforming them into visions that resonate far beyond the country’s borders. The show unfolds like a mosaic in motion. Kantha embroideries, stitched from the fabric of domestic life, become emotional archives; the suspended landscapes of Kashmir expose a contested geography; the body, filtered through medical language, becomes a site of control and unease. Histories linking Bengal to Fascist Italy reveal how ideologies cross oceans and generations, while colonial artifacts and Company School paintings expose forms of rebellion embedded in everyday objects. Knots and networks connect artist-run spaces across continents, murals question the endurance of caste hierarchies, and Kerala’s forests emerge as liminal zones where life and afterlife coexist. Cosmographies and distorted bestiaries map the monsters we continue to create.
The rhythm of the exhibition is built through diverse media - painting, video, sculpture, performance - all embodying a tension between fragility and resistance. These works do not merely depict a nation: they offer escape routes, imagine open futures, and show how creativity can become an antidote to fear.
